ARTICLES ABOUT MURDER CONVICTION BY DATE - PAGE 2

Robert Jarrett Jr. was convicted Tuesday of murdering his wife, following a trial in which prosecutors described him as a "cold-blooded killer" who allowed his sons to walk over her body buried beneath their backyard shed for two decades. Howard County jurors handed down a guilty verdict on one count of second-degree murder after deliberating into the night, bringing an end to a years-long investigation. Prosecutors, who had pushed for a first-degree murder conviction, said they would seek the maximum penalty of 30 years in prison at Jarrett's sentencing, scheduled in August.

With his fiancee seven months pregnant and his bail bonds business struggling to get the insurance it needed, Ralph Hall received a voice mail from someone offering to help him out. On a midsummer evening, Hall drove to the KIPP Ujima Village Academy on Greenspring Avenue to try to make a deal. He met his contact and they talked inside Hall's car for just over five minutes, video of the scene shows, before the other man pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and shot Hall twice, killing him, according to prosecutors.

UPDATE: A Baltimore jury has found Michael Maurice Johnson guilty of second-degree murder in the killing Phylicia Barnes, a North Carolina teenager whose body was found in the Susquehanna River in 2011, months after a mysterious disappearance that drew national attention. Lawyers on both sides had acknowledged in closing arguments that the evidence against Johnson was circumstantial. But while defense attorneys described flaws and inconsistencies, prosecutors said the facts pointed to Johnson as the only reasonable suspect.

The state's highest court has overturned the second-degree murder conviction of Thomas B. Harris, convicted of fatally stabbing Karim Cross in a Randallstown bar in 2006, and ordered a new trial. The Court of Appeals agreed with a decision by the lower appeals court. Harris was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger said prosecutors would make a decision on "whether we can go forward" with retrying Harris, as they would have to find witnesses from six years ago. The court agreed with the lower appeals court ruling that the trial judge should have declared a mistrial.

Attorneys for George W. Huguely V are appealing his second-degree murder conviction for beating his ex-girlfriend to death in May 2010. Huguely, a former University of Virginia lacrosse player from Chevy Chase, was convicted in February and sentenced in August to 23 years in prison for the death of Yeardley Love, 22, of Cockeysville. A notice of appeal was filed Tuesday in the Charlottesville Circuit Court, but it does not lay out the grounds for the challenge. Before the sentencing, Huguely's legal team had asked the judge to overturn the verdict, arguing that the trial had been unfair and that the jury received improper instructions.

Pamela Prowant was shot multiple times in her apartment in Laurel in 1985, lived with paralysis and used a wheelchair for another 27 years, and died in January of what appeared to be natural causes. In April, the office of the chief medical examiner ruled her death a homicide, essentially declaring that the injuries she sustained almost three decades ago caused her death this year while Prowant, in her early 50s, was still relatively young. Prowant's death is the 28th homicide of 2012 in Prince George's, a negative mark on the county's crime books that won't - and legally can't - be erased with a murder conviction.

Prosecutors fought claims Friday that George Huguely V — convicted of second-degree murder in the beating death of Yeardley Love, his University of Virginia girlfriend — received an unfair trial, filing a pointed response to a recent request for a new proceeding that said the defense "misses the mark. " The 37-page document, filed in the Charlottesville, Va., Circuit Court by Commonwealth Attorney Warner "Dave" Chapman, also addressed new allegations made by Huguely's attorneys earlier this week, claiming that Love's Cockeysville-based family considers her murder two years ago an accident.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld a Baltimore County man's conviction in the death of his wife who went missing the night she was supposed to go to a Motley Crue concert in Washington and whose body was never found. Dennis J. Tetso, 47, who was found guilty of second-degree murder in the presumed death of Tracey Leigh Gardner, lost his appeal that argued a lack of insufficient evidence to support conviction for second-degree murder. Although Gardner's body was never recovered, the court's opinion agreed with the state's arguments that Gardner's disappearance and lack of contact with family and friends and use of credit cards was enough to show that Gardner was dead.